


What Remains of Alicia Banes

by TigerLilyNoh



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, Depression, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Existential Angst, Existential Crisis, Gen, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Protective Sam Winchester, Sam Winchester and Mental Health Issues, Sam Winchester as a mentor, Self-Harm, Suicide Attempt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-21
Updated: 2017-12-21
Packaged: 2019-02-18 02:57:32
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,128
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13090974
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TigerLilyNoh/pseuds/TigerLilyNoh
Summary: Eight months after the events of Twings & Twine & Tasha Banes (12x20), Sam receives a phone call from Max Banes asking for help.  When Sam arrives, he discovers that the situation is far from what he was expecting.Trigger Warning: Discussion of depression, self-harm, and suicide attempts.





	What Remains of Alicia Banes

**Author's Note:**

  * For [FourLights](https://archiveofourown.org/users/FourLights/gifts).



> Huge thanks to Lastarael for beta-reading this work. Fun fact: She's awesome.

It’d been roughly eight months since Sam had last spoken to Max Banes.  On the night that they’d killed the witch that had murdered Max’s mother and sister, he and Dean had offered to help him out whenever he needed, though there hadn’t been a peep from him until that morning.  On the phone he’d sounded upset, but wouldn’t explain what was wrong.  He’d asked for Sam to come alone.  Something had happened and it sounded like he was embarrassed or ashamed.

On the four-hour drive to the Fox family estate, Sam considered the possible reasons why Max would request that only he come.  A trap seemed unlikely; Max didn’t seem the sinister type and there were enough other friends and acquaintances that would serve as more blindly-compelling bait.  For a brief moment he considered that maybe there was something to his suspicion that Max had been flirting with him at Isa Fox’s funeral, though feigning an emergency and making him drive that far didn’t seem like a reasonable funny-meeting-you-here moment.  It could’ve been that Max had noticed that he was the more magically attuned of the Winchester brothers and therefore might be more sympathetic or useful in an instance of a spell gone wrong.

When he got to the small mansion he noticed that it was almost entirely dark except for a light in the entryway and one of the rooms upstairs.  Some of the decorative plants in the front yard appeared overgrown.  A shingle had fallen from the roof and been left on the front porch long enough that a spider had taken up residence.  He wasn’t sure if Max’s grandmother was still alive, but either way the house had a look of neglect about it.  After trying the doorbell, Sam opened the unlocked front door.

Max was sitting on the first few steps of the wooden staircase just beyond the door.  Large, old blood stains tarnished his grey skinny jeans and his olive green sweater.  There weren’t any obvious injuries, but he seemed in a daze.  His pink, puffy eyes were transfixed on his bloody hands until Sam closed the front door.  Sam was about to ask what had happened when he spotted the silver ring containing a teardrop-shaped gem of purple made irregular by the dark splotches of drying blood that had crept inside the setting.  Max was wearing the cursed thing.  He'd taken the deal.

“She’s upstairs,” the witch said when Sam’s gaze flicked reflexively around for Alicia—what was left of Alicia.  “I won’t let you hurt her.”

“I came here to help you.  I’m not gonna hurt anyone.”  Sam raised his hands in a subtle gesture of reassurance.  “You asked me to come.”

“Yeah.”  Max nodded, but he barely looked at Sam.

His face was a bit pale and his skin was clammy.  He was in shock.  It reminded Sam painfully of the last time they’d seen each other.

“Is that her blood?” Sam asked.

“Is her blood even blood…?” Max muttered to himself before pursing his lips.  He leaned his head back and took a sharp breath to collect himself.  “Yeah, man.  It’s hers.”

“What happened—“  Sam thought better of bringing up the obvious events that had occurred the night Alicia had died.  They had more urgent worries.  “How did she get hurt?  How can I help?”

“I….”  Max shifted, trying to regather his normal suave composure.  “I heard you were in a psych ward twice—no judgment.  With all the things I’ve heard about you….  I thought maybe you’d know what to do.  How to make her better.”

Sam had no idea what his mental health history had to do with any of this.  Alicia, or some facsimile of her, had been injured and that was….  Sam nearly cringed at the realization of what had happened, but he managed to mask his concern.  If his guess was correct, it would be important to be a source of stability.  He knelt down on the hardwood floor in front of Max so that he wasn’t towering over the undoubtedly terrified witch.

He softened his facial expression and tone.  “Was this the first time she hurt herself?”

Max moved to wipe away a tear, but stopped when he saw that the wrists of his sweater had turned brown with blood.  He shook his head.

Sam pressed the issue.  “How many times has this happened?”

“Three.”  Max’s voice was too quiet.  “This morning, when I got things stable… I told her not to do anything until you got here.  She's just lying on her bed, waiting.”

It’d been months since Alicia had died.  The golem, doll—whatever she was—had probably been alive for that long.  The spell had needed her heart….  Sam pushed the mental image of what Max had done from his mind.  Whatever he personally might’ve thought of it, what was done was done.  Right then there was just a scared kid, who needed his help.  Sam glanced upstairs.  Actually, there were two scared kids.

“Max, I need you to tell me how this works.”  Sam tried to keep his tone somewhere between reassuring and academically curious.  “I’m not gonna try to stop it; I’m not gonna make her go away.  I just want to understand what we’re dealing with.”

“She’s almost her, almost Alicia.  She has all her memories, knows all our jokes.  She even hassles me when I try to drive.”  Max let out a sad sort of chuckle.  “I burned the body.  There’s no soul….  I don’t know—I don’t think there’s a soul.  I took her heart.  She has Alicia’s heart, but there’s no EMF....”

“Okay, so probably no soul.”  Sam tried to make his voice noncritical.  He needed to keep Max focused.  “Does she remember dying?”

“No, not really.  She doesn’t remember it, but sometimes she asks me questions about our mom’s death and….  She figures out something’s wrong; like there’s a piece missing.  Alicia was always smart.  She was nosy like that.”  Max’s lip wavered between a smile and a grimace, then he covered his face with his hands for a moment, heedless of the dried blood on them.  “When she realizes that something’s wrong I make her forget.  A few times it went too far before I knew she’d figured it out and she’d already hurt herself.  I can make her stop if she starts—she has to do whatever I tell her.  I don’t do that much, but when she hurts herself….”

Sam broke eye contact and nodded in acknowledgement of everything as he started trying to figure out what to do.  Max was dabbling in controlling her—whatever she was.  Despite his good intentions, he was getting ominously close to falling down a path of domination and abuse, the kind of power trip that gave witches a bad reputation.  It was dangerous on that level, but in an immediate sense Max’s actions were unintentionally harming the creature upstairs… the creature that had Alicia’s memories and personality.  In all probability she didn’t know what was going on, and none of this was her fault.

“You’re going to give up control," Sam instructed with the calm conviction of a man trying to impart subjective centuries of wisdom.  “You don’t get to tell her what to do anymore.”

Max’s brow furrowed.  “What if she wants to kill herself again?”  

Thankfully, Max’s voice was more confused than resistant—he at least felt conflicted about controlling her.  Sam put his hand on Max’s shoulder in a gesture of comfort, then gently turned Max’s face to look him in the eyes, emphasizing the next point.

“If you think she’s having a hard time, you try to talk to her about it and get her help.  You don’t take away her personhood.”

“She’s not….”  Max was trembling, uncertain how to finish the sentence.

“I don’t care how she got here.  I don’t care if she doesn’t have a soul.  She has thoughts and feelings.  She thinks and feels that you’re her brother.”

Max clenched his eyes, feeling the anguish borne from his choices, then sighed.  “I know.”

“She’s your sister.”  Sam paused a beat to let that sink in.  He could tell Max was truly listening to him.  “Treat her with some respect.”

* * *

Sam politely knocked on the bedroom door despite suspecting that Max’s instruction for Alicia to do nothing probably applied until she became aware of his presence.  Sure enough, there was no answer.  He slowly opened the door and stepped into the small but lavishly decorated bedroom.

She was lying on top of her bed, wearing a previously cream colored blouse and blue jeans that were half-covered in maroon-brown stains.  Sizable, bloody gauze bandages covered both arms from her wrists to a few inches shy of her elbows.  She was staring straight up at the ceiling, completely frozen—not even breathing.  

On the floor beside the bed were several bowls of damp cloths and bloody water.  The nightstand held a porcelain tea set, ready to provide a soothing drink.  Evidently Max had been trying to tend to her before he’d gotten there.

“It’s me, Sam," he offered as a greeting and a harbinger of conversation.

As soon as he’d finished talking she seemed to revive.  Her chest started rising and falling in either a subtle guise or sincere self-delusion of breathing.  When he took a step closer, her half-open, bloodshot eyes watched him cautiously, then flicked away in embarrassment, self-consciously settling on her bandaged arms.  She pursed her lips and might’ve rolled her body away from him, but he suspected that she really was too exhausted to properly evade him.

“Can I sit down?” Sam asked.  When she didn’t answer, he took the liberty of pulling an armchair up to the side of her bed.  “I wanted to check on you, to see how you’re doing.”  

“You don’t know me.”  She spoke so quietly that Sam had to scoot a few inches closer.  “We haven’t met.”

“Maybe, maybe not.  Either way, you’re my friend and I’m concerned about you.”  Sam gave her a few seconds to process what he’d said and potentially argue with him, but she only blinked slowly.  “Do you know why you hurt yourself?”

“I… I think so,” she hesitantly replied.  "I wanted to know if I feel pain.... And—and after I started, I just... kept going. I want—I wanted it to stop."

“You certainly look like someone who’s in pain.”  Sam offered her that validation.  “Do you remember what physical pain feels like?  Do you have the memory from before you died?”

“Yeah.  When I was fourteen I was biking down a hill.  I slipped on some loose gravel and skidded along the ground; I lost most of the skin on my arm….”  Her face dimmed as she stared at the bandages.  “Alicia lost most of the skin on her arm.”

“Did cutting yourself hurt?”  He kept his tone somewhere along the lines of neutral interest.  The last thing he wanted was for her to think he was judging her.

“Not as much as I would’ve thought.”  Her words seemed heavy, burdened by her shame and disappointment.

Sam nodded subtly with profound appreciation for both her discovery and the unease it had created in her.  “Depression can do that.”

Alicia shifted her body so that she could look him in the eyes.  Her brow was furrowed slightly in confusion, but her lips were relaxed instead of scowling.  She was curious—a very welcome emotion, all things considered.

“How do you know I’m depressed?” she asked warily.

Sam gave a little shrug.  “I imagine I would be if I was in your position.”

“You’re a person,” she countered.  

“And you aren’t?”

She didn’t have a comeback for that.  They stared at each other:  him with a friendly smile on his face, her trying to figure out what he was getting at.  

Sam started checking the teapot that was on the nightstand; it was still warm.  He began pouring himself a cup of tea in an attempt to fill the silence with an act of utter normalcy while giving her whatever time she needed.

“I… I don’t think I have a soul,” she replied after almost a minute.

“I didn’t have a soul for about a year and a half," Sam commented, then sipped his tea.  “Even though I was a bit disjointed back then, I was still a person.”

She inched toward the head of the bed in an attempt at partially sitting up to give him more of her attention.  He put down his teacup and helped reposition the pillows for her.  Her eyes were more lively and her mouth moved a bit, experimenting with voicing a thought.

“What do you mean by disjointed?”

“I felt numb.  I was confused about what was happening to me, but I wasn’t really scared.  Nothing scared me.”  Sam pursed his lips at the unpleasant memory.  “Things didn’t feel as real—I think I was fine with that at the time, once I knew why everything was the way it was.”

“Do you hate him?”

Sam didn’t respond at first.  He knew that she was probably drawing parallels between herself and the version of him that had existed without a soul.  He didn’t want to be dismissive or insulting to his former self and risk her taking it as a reflection on herself as opposed to him.  But at the same time he wasn’t prepared to lie to her in some shortsighted ploy to protect her.  She’d already lived through too much deception in her short life.

“There’s no ‘him,’ not in the way most people think of it.  He’s just me under different circumstances.”  Sam chewed his lip a bit, struggling to find the right words to explain the relationship.  “When I was him….  He did things that I wouldn’t do now, but I understand why he made those choices.  I don’t hate him.  I used to a little, back before I started trying to accept myself.”

“What kinds of things did you do back then, things you wouldn’t do now?”

“I was single-minded, mostly about hunting.  I wanted to be as good a hunter as I could, and…” Sam swallowed a bit of his emotion. “...I was unrelenting.  I killed people that didn’t need to die, because it was efficient.”

“There was something wrong with you, because you didn’t have a soul,” she suggested.

“I didn’t have a soul because there was something wrong with me.  There’s a difference.”  Sam pointed out the false equivalence.  “I’ve known plenty of people without souls who’ve been better than I was.  A human, angels, vampires, even a demon or two—”

“But they’re….”  She looked around, eyes trying to avoid his.  “I don’t know who I am or what’s real.”

“Soul or not, I’ve been in a similar position a few times before,” Sam offered, tapping experience gained from far too many incidents for a single lifetime.  “I’ve been confused about reality, not being sure if I can believe my own eyes or my memories.  It’s frightening.”

“Are you still frightened?”

“Sometimes, but over the years I’ve gotten better.”  Sam smiled for her benefit, but also at the realization that it was the truth.  “That’s why I’m here, talking to you about this.  Maybe I don't understand everything about what you're going through, but you trying to explain it to me... that's the foundation we build on. That's how we try to make it all less frightening."

“It’s not the same.”  She shook her head.  “You’re real.”

“And I’m saying that you’re real.  Maybe you aren’t human, but you’re definitely a person.”

“I’m a puppet.”

“Puppets don’t have existential crises.”

He expected her to argue with him, but she just sat for a moment.  Her chest heaved a few times with a series of what he hoped were deep, calming breaths.  She looked back down at her bandaged arms for a long while, then up at him.

“What am I supposed to do?”

His heart nearly ached with sympathy and a glimmer of hope.  “You’re going to hurt.”  He got right to the hard truth—she deserved the truth.  “Your brother isn’t going to erase the pain anymore and he won’t be telling you what to do.”

“He… he was just trying to….”  Alicia started tearing up.

Sam slowly moved to sit down on the bed next to her, carefully telegraphing his intent and watching for signs that she was uncomfortable.  He gently pulled her into a hug and could feel her begin sobbing.  She tried to wrap her arms around him, but her forearms were too damaged or too painful to really manipulate.  Instead she rolled her shoulders forward, burying as much of herself in his embrace as possible.

“You’ve been violated, betrayed—I get that.  I know your brother had good intentions, but it was selfish of him to do that to you.  You’re allowed to be upset.”  Sam assured her, then held her back away from him so that he could look her in the eyes.  “It’s going to take a long time for the trust to come back.  You two trusting each other.  You trusting yourself.  But I want you to know that I trust you.”

“Sam, I….”  Alicia’s mouth moved, but she couldn’t get the words out.  She looked down and shook her head in a distinctly ashamed tell.

“It’s okay.  You can tell me anything," Sam encouraged her.  “I won’t be upset.”

“What… what…” Her breath hitched as she started crying again.  “What if I’m evil?”

He wrapped her in another hug and held her tightly.  She nuzzled into his chest, allowing herself to be comforted—something for which he was deeply grateful.  His hand softly rubbed her back as she wept.

“It’s okay,” he whispered.  “Let it out.”

When she was done sobbing, she looked incredibly exhausted—understandably so.  He carefully helped her into a sitting position, leaning her against the headboard.  She partially drew her knees up toward her chest, but she didn’t seem nearly as withdrawn.  While she was repositioning, Sam grabbed a box of tissues for her, then picked up the teapot.  He held it, ready to pour a second cup, then looked to her.  After a moment she nodded.

“You know, worrying that you might be evil is actually a good sign.”  Sam moved to hand her the teacup, but realized she might have trouble holding it with her injured arms.  He gingerly held the cup up to be in front of her lips, then gave a diminutive, apologetic shrug.  A reflective smile flickered on her face before she leaned forward and took a sip.  “Let me tell you a story.  Back when I was a little younger than you, I started getting psychic visions….”


End file.
